SSD Partition on PopOS!

Good day everyone!
I’m a super Linux noob and I have a Lenovo laptop with 2 SSDs, 1TB and 512 GB.

On the smaller one I had Windows 10 . The larger had 2 partitions, one with Ubuntu and the other with storage accessible from both OS.

I was watching Wendell’s review of System 76 laptop and he praised PopOS! so I decided to give it a try. While Installing it I got to the partition part and found it confusing. I decided to empty my 1 TB SSD, install PopOS and than partition a part of it for ‘common storage’ like my previous setup. I believe it was necessary to use a ‘GPT’ partitioning.

Attached are images from the Driver application. Can I salvage this or do I need to reinstall? Should I move Windows to the 1TB and install PopOs on the other? Tips on how to would be appreciated. Why does it show I have 2.5 TB? If someone can explain the 4 disks I’d appreciate that. Especially the 2 parallel 991 GB bars.

I simply want my shared storage partition…




Your fat partitions are the shared space that both linux and windows can read and write to
The swap partition is a section of the drive set aside by the linux os as temporary memory
Generally the os uses a swap partition only if needed for heavy computing.
And the swap partition is generally double the size of the system memory
For most systems with over 6 to 8 gig of ram, a swap file is not needed.
But a gaming machine! Yes it will make a difference. Windows does not use swap partition

Partitioning can follow different schemes.
Some os’s will make a single partition or multiple ones.
I myself prefer multi partitioning.
Root, swap, home, temp, and var. ( variable)
During partitioning you can chose the format you wish instead of just using default schemes.
This makes you system much more secure.

But as a noob go with the default settings until you get used to it.
Most distros today will allow you to install alongside of your windows and allow you to choose which os at startup.

Linux is a lot easier to install today than it was when I first learned it

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I would like to add that your pop_OS drive is encrypted, which is nice. Notice your third image has a horizontal bar with the upper one having a lock icon.

As for the multipartitioning, this is one of the more advanced ways to install linux.

The /var folder, specifically the /var/log folder is quite useful in diagnosing linux problems, Often times people would ask to post some of the files from that log folder to help you diagnose problems and these logs are quite verbose.

The reason you want these separated is that you could end up in a looping error and there could be a chance that this particular looping error will fill out your entire hard disk if you dont separate the disk partition especially if the error is particularly nasty and this can compound the problem. Granted, this doesn’t happen much these days, but it is still considered good practice to do partitioning.

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Thank you for your response @Gnuuser @regulareel ! I will look into these as I use the OS more. Hopefully it’ll become my daily driver.

I ended up deleting PopOS!, cloning Windows on the 1TB SSD, making the remaining an exFAT partition and finally reinstalling PopOS on the smaller one (default settings).

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